Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told a panel of federal judges in the Texas redistricting trial Monday that her congressional office and downtown businesses were stripped from her district by Republicans in the Legislature when they redrew political maps.

The congresswoman said minority growth in the state gave her hope that a new Latino congressional district would be carved into the Houston area, and an African American opportunity district would be created in Fort Worth.

Instead, Republicans drew a congressional map that created no new minority opportunity districts, and redrew political lines that harmed her inner city Houston minority neighborhoods by taking way economic centers.

“My district lost the downtown business community,” said Jackson Lee, D-Houston. “That is an outrage.”

The two-week federal trial to determine if Texas redistricting maps dilute minority voting strength resumed Monday with political experts who testified that the racial makeup of precincts was taken into account by Republican map makers when they drew new lines, a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Latinos were taken out of some congressional and state House districts to help Hispanic Republicans win re-election, said Theodore Arrington, a University of North Carolina political science professor who analyzed the Texas redistricting plans.

“All the experts in this case agree,” Arrington said. “Hispanics vote cohesively for Democrats.”
Republicans also failed to account for population gains in the state by minorities, who represent 90 percent of the 4.3 million growth over the past decade, according to the 2010 Census.

The state will receive four new congressional seats, to 36 from 32, but minority rights groups say they get no new districts with an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

Morgan Kousser, political expert on discrimination at the California Institute of Technology, said in some cases Texas Republicans drawing the maps packed Latinos into a political district, only to reduce Latino precincts with strong turnout rates in another district.

Kousser said minority voting strength was reduced in the South Texas district of Rep. Francisco Canseco, R-San Antonio, while Latinos were packed in newly created 35th congressional district that runs from San Antonio to Austin.

Even though San Antonio Democrats favored the new 35th district, Kousser said the state Legislature “deliberately seemed to be invoking the history of racial discrimination.”

The federal panel will determine whether the state violated the Voting Rights Act and whether the state maps can be used.

At stake in the trial is the political balance in the Texas House and Senate, and Congress.
Democrats nationally are eying the process and the party’s ability to pick up three to five congressional seats as part of their effort to win back the U.S. House.

John Hughes, a lawyer for the state, on cross examination, got the witnesses to agree that the congressional and state House maps in Fort Worth, San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley were ordered drawn at the behest of minority lawmakers for political reasons.

Still, Kousser said that even though the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, as well as Latino state House Democrats, favored the newly drawn 35th congressional district, the state was the only entity to act on it.

And, Kousser said, it was an “offset district,” creating a minority opportunity district while Republicans decreased the opportunity for minorities to elect a candidate of their choice in the nearby 23rd district held by Canseco.

Questioned why Hispanic Republicans would want Anglos or low turnout Hispanic precincts, Kousser said he found is that Latinos do not “vote for a Latino Republican.”

Meanwhile, Jackson Lee told the court that Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, the congressional delegation point person with GOP mapmakers, had vowed an open process. But Jackson Lee said good intentions proved to be little more than that.

“I left the door open to be reached. I am not hard to find. I was not reached back to,” Jackson Lee said.